Daughters of Eve (19 page)

It chilled her now. Her spine was ice, and her teeth were chattering with a cold that did not come from the November wind.

"Bambi was so angry," she said. "I've never seen her like that. She's always been the one to hang loose, to take things as they came."

"She's got reason to be mad," Ann said. "She trusted Pete. She thought he loved her. And then there's Laura. It makes me want to cry when I think about her."

"Kelly's the one who scares me," Tammy said. "She's changed so much, so fast. She's become so bitter."

"Who can blame her? I'd be bitter too if my father walked out on Mom and me. Wouldn't you—if it was your father?"

"Yes." She could not deny that.

"And think about Jane."

"Yes—Jane. That's an awful situation." Tammy shuddered. "I never believed people could really be that way. You see her parents at church, and they look so happy together."

"It's like Irene says, we've had our eyes shut," Ann said. "You and I are luckier than most people. We've been packed in cotton padding. But the real world is out there, and you never know when it's going to reach out and grab you. It can happen so suddenly."

"How did you vote?"

"I voted to punish Peter."

"That doesn't sound much like 'gentle Annie,'" Tammy said wryly.

Her friend gave her a surprised glance. "How did you know Dave calls me that?"

"I didn't. It just came to me, the way things do sometimes. I told you once that something was going to happen this semester. I saw a candle—with blood—"

"Tammy, don't," Ann interrupted curtly. "I don't want to have to worry about your 'seeing things.' I've got problems of my own."

"I'm sorry," Tammy said contritely. "Do you want to talk about them?"

"No. But I sure don't want to talk about bleeding candles. Sometimes, Tarn, you're so weird it's a real turn-off."

It was the first cruel thing Ann had ever said to her. Or, as far as Tammy knew, to anyone.

CHAPTER 14

November twenty-ninth was a Wednesday.

Two days short of December, the final month of the year. Something happens at that break point between November and December. There is a quickening, a shift in movement; days that formerly shuffled along as though in houseshoes begin to sharpen their pace into a measured clip like the staccato rap of boots on asphalt. Soon the end, and then a new beginning. Hurry, hurry along and wind the old year up so that the new one may begin.

November 29 in Modesta broke through a week of overcast as a bright, blue day, as blue as the shade of David Brewer's eyes. A sharp, whining wind arrived with the dawn; it dropped to a lull in the middle of the day and rose again toward evening. People built fires. Along Locust Street and Elm Street and Maple Street, along First Street and Second and Third, rows of chimneys emptied columns of smoke into the skies, and the wind caught them and twirled them and sent them riding upward in a soft, gray haze which hung like a blanket over the town.

Mrs. Rheardon cooked venison for dinner that night. Bart Rheardon had killed a deer on his hunting trip. The meat was stringy and tough with an odd, wild taste that made Jane gag, but she ate it anyway, washing it down with water. Her father was in a good mood. She wanted to keep him that way.

"I have to go over to Ruthie's tonight to study for a history test," she told him.

Tammy Carncross's mother fried hamburgers.

Paula Brummell's mother served spaghetti with canned sauce. She had done eight heads of hair that day, one of them a frosting. She was tired.

Paula excused herself early to get started on the dishes so she could go next door to Fran's and get some help with her math homework.

Fran Schneider announced at dinner that she would need to use the car to drive over to Barnards' Pet Emporium and pick up a new breeding cage.

"They won't be open at night, will they?" her father asked her.

"They will until nine. After I leave there I have to stop at the Carncrosses' and get the application forms for the science fair. I need to get those filled out before the end of the week."

The dinner hour ended. Here and there throughout the town, doors opened to let young girls step through them, out into the early winter darkness.

Holly Underwood had to go to church to practice the new organ pieces for Sunday's recessional.

Ann Whitten and Bambi Ellis were going to the apartment of one of their teachers to work on an art project.

Kelly Johnson and Tammy Carncross and Ruth Grange all had work to do at the library.

Parental voices. "You're not going to try to walk, are you?"

"No—no—of course not. I've got a ride with Fran"—"with Kelly"—"with Holly."

"Did you get your note, Pete?" Ruth called back as she left. "I left it on your bureau."

"Who's it from?" Niles asked. "A doting admirer?"

"Bambi."

"Oh, well, there's no difference. Love note?"

"Nope. It's funny. Real funny," Peter said. "It doesn't sound Hike her. Even the handwriting's different. Scrawlly. As if she was in a hurry or mad or something." He held out the paper for his brother to read. "What do you make of it?"

"'Meet me at the creek. Seven-thirty. Very important. B.'" Niles grinned. "It sounds to me like that chick may be coming around."

"Not Bam. Not like this, anyway, with it all planned out ahead of time." Peter frowned. "She never wants to 'meet' me anywhere. She likes to be picked up."

"Maybe she wants her own set of wheels so she can take off on you when she feels like it."

"That's what worries me. What's she stewing about? Do you think she knows about Laura?"

"No way," Niles said. "How could she? That fat bag isn't going to go around telling people. You should have seen her Saturday night. She was a basket case."

"You shouldn't have gone over there."

"Why not? It was worth a try."

"She's not that sort."

"How was I to know? If she'd put out for one guy, she might for another."

"You could have asked me first," Peter said. "You'd have saved yourself a bloody mouth."

"Win a few, lose a few. I'll admit I was plenty mad, but, hell, that's life." Niles shrugged. "The point is, she's got nothing to brag about. You're back with Bambi, and Laura's odd man out. That's not the land of thing a girl broadcasts around school."

"You're right about that," Peter agreed. "Besides, I don't think she's been to school this week at all. So, where does that leave us? That damned Bam, always finding some way to keep a guy off balance. I'm going to call her and find out what's up"

"It's too late for that," Niles said. "She wants you to meet her at seven-thirty. It's past that now."

"Shit," Peter snorted in frustration. "Trust Ruthie to wait till the final minute. I bet that note was sitting on my bureau for hours."

Pointer's Creek ran along the southern edge of the town. Pointer's Creek Road followed it along its north shore, then crossed by means of a narrow bridge, and continued along the wooded south shore, winding as the creek did in a series of gentle dips and curves. At one point west of town, where the creek cut across the southeast corner of Dave Brewer's property, the road swerved away for a time, returning again a mile or so later to reunite itself with the strip of moving water.

The creek was many things to many people. To farmers, like Dave, it was a source of irrigation. To fishermen it was a flycaster's paradise. To the children of Modesta it was a foaming highway for canvas rafts and innertubes, and to their worried mothers a summertime ogre waiting with dripping jaws to devour their young.

Dan and Lil Carncross, Tammy's parents, had courted on the shore of Pointer's Creek. Holly Underwood's parents had become engaged there. It was on a footpath along the creek's edge that Ruth Grange's mother had walked and dreamed during the lonely months during "the Korean War when her husband-to-be was overseas. As a toddler, Kelly Johnson's sister, Chris, had almost drowned in the creek when she wandered away during a family outing, and a few years later Paula Brummell had broken her foot there jumping on rocks. As this new generation grew to young adulthood, they, like their parents before them, began to come as couples to the sweet, dark privacy of the wooded banks. It was during a summer picnic there that David Brewer had looked at the slim, brown-haired girl beside him, bent in concentration over her sketchpad, and thought—this is my love.

Peter Grange was no stranger to Pointer's Creek Road. He drove it this night with the ease of long familiarity, anticipating each curve before it appeared in the glare of his headlights. Nor had he been confused by the brevity of the message. "At the creek" could have meant any spot along a ten-mile stretch of water, but to Peter it meant only one. There was a particular place where the road jogged abruptly south and the creek was lost to view behind a curtain of trees. Here, with the entrance half hidden by leaf growth, there was a jeep trail which led a hundred yards through the underbrush to a clearing.

"Our place," he and Bambi called it. He had taken her there on their third date. It had been springtime then, and the creek had been full to the brim, splashing and frothing in a silver rage as it tumbled over roots and rocks and leaped wildly at tree limbs.

Bambi had been beautiful in the moonlight, more beautiful even than she was at school. The long, bright hair had felt like damp corn silk beneath his fingers as he turned her head in his hands to look down into the small, exquisite face.

He had told her he loved her. It was the first time he had said this to any girl, and the sound of his voice speaking the words had filled him with terror. It was as if with one statement he had been stripped naked, leaving himself vulnerable to any blow she might wish to give.

But she had not laughed or done anything to hurt him. Her face had gone soft, and whatever words she murmured had been lost against his mouth.

Later, Niles had asked, "How did you hook that chick when every guy in school was after her?"

"With pretty words," Peter had told him. "Girls are like computers. Feed in the right material at the right time and, click!, you get back what you want."

Niles had liked that and for weeks he had gone around repeating it. Each time he did so, he would throw Peter a conspirator's grin. Peter would smile back, cool and superior, bestowing the benefits of his advanced experience upon an admiring younger brother. Never did he admit to Niles—or to himself, for that matter—that those words spoken by the stream might have been true.

As soon as they began going steady, he knew he was out of his element. He could not handle Bambi; he could not control their relationship. She kept him continually off-balance with her combination of sensual femininity and hard-core toughness. Her self-centeredness matched his own; her self-confidence was awesome. She was brighter than he academically, making A's in subjects in which he the year before had struggled for C's. Her career aspirations were concrete and attainable; she did not need him to direct her future or to give it meaning.

When he walked through the halls with Bambi on his arm, he felt like King of the World. Two minutes later he might find himself deserted, left staring at the back of her bobbing blond head as she went racing off to speak to one of her many girl friends or to participate in some activity that did not include him. He wanted to make love to her. She would not let him. She teased and kissed and cuddled until he was weak with excitement, then left him feeling sick with longing and frustration.

The worst part was keeping up a front before his friends. All of them thought he was making it with Bambi. He couldn't admit the truth of the matter, even to his brother; Niles had been screwing around with girls since he was fourteen.

Twice he had attempted to break up with her. When they parted for the summer, he had determinedly shoved her from his mind and set out to date every pretty girl at the lake. For a while he had thought it was working. His days and evenings were always full, and he slept too soundly at night to dream. Then school had started. On the first day he had passed her locker, and there she was, wearing one of those see-through blouses of hers, flipping that shining hair back over her shoulders in that familiar way. All the air had gone out of his lungs, and his legs had gotten weak, and a moment later he had been beside her saying, "Hi, Bam, which way is your next class?" And they had been walking together. And his hand had found hers. And it was all back the way it had been as though there had been no interruption.

The second breakup had been the recent one. This time he had tried to fill the gap with Laura. He was not particularly proud of this. He would never even have started it if he had not been in such a rage at Bambi and if Laura had not appeared suddenly right in front of him. Seeing her there on the sidewalk, he had pulled his car to the curb and called, "Hey, kid, need a ride?"

"No, thank you," she had started to respond. Then she had turned enough to see who it was. Her mouth had fallen open. It had been funny to see her expression.

"Oh—" she had murmured. "Peter!"

"Hop in," he had said. "I'm headed your direction. By the way, are you busy tonight? What about taking in a movie?"